Result of dengue virus tests to be made public this week

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Ministry of Health will complete tests on the dengue fever virus on Wednesday and was likely to announce the results the same day, an official has said.

Minister of Health Achmad Suyudi is expected to announce the type of the virus that has spread the fatal disease. The tests would confirm whether the virus was a new strain or not, spokeswoman Mariani Reksoprodjo said.

Mariani did not say whether test samples had been taken from areas across the country. There is a possibility different viruses could be infecting different areas.

The outcome of the tests would lay the basis for a further study aimed at finding a vaccine to help prevent the disease, she said.

Updating the outbreak's death toll, Mariani said more than 200 people nationwide had now become victims of the disease, with more than half of provinces in the archipelago affected by it.

As of Monday, at least 222 people have died and 11,013 have become infected with the mosquito-borne virus in 19 provinces.

They are Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Riau, Jambi, Banten, Jakarta, West Java, Central Java, Jogjakarta, East Java, West Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, East Kalimantan, North Sulawesi, South Sulawesi, Bali, East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara, and Papua.

Further deaths in the regions were reported on Monday. At least seven people had died of dengue fever in the Sikka district, East Nusa Tenggara, a local health official said.

Sikka health office head Dr Ignatius Henyo Kerong said of 79 people infected with the dengue fever recently, seven had died. Most of the victims were school-age children.

He called on the public to remain on full alert and continue to clean up the breeding ground of the "aedes aegypti" mosquito, which carried the deadly virus.

In Banda Aceh, 28 local residents had been infected with the disease since January this year, but no fatalities had been reported yet, local health official Muhammad Hasan said.

Dengue fever strikes Indonesia every year, starting in January and peaking in May or June at the end of the tropical rainy season.

The Ministry of Health has called the most recent outbreak an "extraordinary" one because the number of infections is more than double for those in the same period last year.

Dengue cases in the country have shown an increasing trend over the past four years, from 21,134 in 1999, 33,443 in 2000, 45,904 in 2001, 40,377 in 2002 to 50,131 in 2003.

This was in line with World Health Organization figures, which show dengue cases increasing annually across Southeast Asia. Dengue peaked in cycles of about five years and the current infections came at the peak of that cycle.

Dengue and dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF) are caused by one of four closely related, but distinct virus serotypes -- DEN-1, DEN- 2, DEN-3, and DEN-4 -- of the genus Flavivirus.

Infection with one of these serotypes does not provide immunity from the others.

There is no vaccine found for dengue but scientists in Indonesia and internationally are racing to develop one.